The prosecutors said the employees involved photographed circuit diagrams of to-be-released 55-inch AMOLED television panels when they were allowed into Samsung and LG's manufacturing plants to inspect for equipment defects from November 2011 to January 2012. They then stored these images on portable memory cards and hid them in their shoes, belts and wallets to avoid suspicion, they added.

A Samsung official told the news agency: "LG Display has consistently acquired our OLED technologies and other business secrets by inducing our researchers to transfer."

Samsung is said to have invested more than 1 trillion won ($879.9 million) in the past ten years in display technology, which allows the firm to claim "nearly 99 percent of the world's OLED market," the official added.

LG said earlier this year that it "do[es] not need Samsung's technology," claiming it "works under a totally different display system."

A spokesperson for Samsung in the U.K. said they were unable to comment at the time of writing. LG did not return calls when approached by ZDNet before publication.